And
there are also many other things which Jesus did, the which,
if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world
itself
could not contain the books that should be written. —John 21:25

The
popular book and movie, The DaVInci Code, raises many
issues about Jesus' life and mission. Most notably, it presents
Jesus as both God and man, and as a wayshower of the divine Christ
potential that lies within each of us.

To
understand Jesus and his teachings as they relate to each one's
"Sonhood" or Christ potential, it is important to study
the larger historical and more universal spiritual context from
which these teachings emanated. Jesus' ministry was influenced
by Judaism as well as by Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, Egyptian
mysteries, and Kabbalic and Essene mysticism.For one,
Judea was more than illiterate masses of people living in near-desert
conditions and conducting simple activities like fishing and carpentry.
It was also a cosmopolitan trade center and an ethnic, cultural,
philosophical, religious and political melting pot.

East
and West Converge

The
two main Jewish sects at the time of Jesus were the Essenes and
the Pharisees. The Essenes believed in the immortality of the
soul as separate from the body, and pursued the mystical union
of man with God. The Pharisees, who dominated the Jerusalem temple
during Jesus' ministry, also believed in reincarnation. Josephus,
a first century Jewish historian, testifies of the popular belief
in reincarnation among Jews, writing, "the souls of bad men
are punished after death and the souls of good men are removed
into other bodies where they will have the power to revive and
live again." Phylo of Alexandria, one of the greatest Jewish
teachers who also met with Jesus' disciple Peter, preached reincarnation,
union with God, and interpreted the Old Testament in a mystical
way.

Greco-Roman
influence within Judea was heavily influenced by Orphism, a spiritual
belief system that taught both reincarnation and that man has
a divine spark. And the trade routes with India opened the door
to silk, spices and Eastern spirituality. As far as three hundred
years before Jesus, India was already sending Buddhist missionaries
into Judea, Greece and Egypt, where more than thirty Buddhist
edicts have been found engraven in stone.

Furthermore,
ancient manuscripts and oral legends reveal that Jesus received
direct training in Egypt and in the East. In India
and Tibet, Jesus is known as Saint Issa, where many shrines to
Saint Issa can be found. Jesus Lived in India by Holger
Kirsten, The Lost Years of Jesus by Elizabeth Clare Prophet,
and Heart of Asia and Altai HImalaya by Nicholas
Roerich irrefutably document that Jesus went to India and Tibet
several times in his life. Tibetan manuscripts first discovered
by Russian writer Nicolas Notovitch in the19th century disclose
that Jesus spent six years between the ages of 14 and 21 travelling
to Tibet and to Indian holy cities like Juggernaut, Rajagriha
and Benares. (The story is documented in The Lost Years of
Jesus.) When Nitovitch found these manuscripts, he went to
Rome, where a high-ranking cardinal told him the Vatican already
possessed 63 complete or incomplete documents brought back by
Christian missionaries concerning Jesus' activities in the East.

According
to the these manuscripts, Jesus insisted on teaching scripture
to the lower castes so the priests decided to kill him and he
fled to the birthplace of Gautama Buddha in the Himalayan foothills.
In Nepal, he mastered the Pali language, became an expert on Buddhist
sacred writings and performed miracles at the feet of Hindu sages.
He also taught karma and reincarnation, as one passage quoting
Jesus about skilled singers records,

"Whence
is their talent and their power? For in one short life they could
not possibly accumulate a quality of voice and the knowledge of
harmony and tone. Are these miracles? No, because all things take
place as a result of natural laws. Many thousands of years ago
these people already molded their harmonies and their qualities.
And they come again to learn still more from varied manifestations."
Jesus left the Himalayas at the age of
27 and slowly returned to Palestine, teaching along the way. Back
in Judea he sought to convey to many the path of personal Christhood,
be it through parables for the multitudes or through the intimate
instruction given to the disciples, holy women and close followers
of his message.

Unto
you is given to know the mysteries of the Kingdom of God
but to others in parables.—Luke
8:10

Many
of Jesus' mystical teachings were recorded in apocryphal gospels
like The Gospel of Thomas, The Secret Book of John, The Secret
Gospel of Mark, The Gospel of Phillip,The Gospel of Mary
Madgdalene, and other texts discovered in 1945 near Nag Hammadi
Egypt. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovered in 1947 near Qumran,
Israel contain over 200 documents, including biblical commentaries,
prophecy, and community rules. These gospels, which predate the
Biblical gospels, supply further evidence that Jesus spoke of
reincarnation, performed secret initiation rites like those of
ancient mystery schools and taught precepts also found in Buddhism,
Taoism and Tibetan spiritual traditions, and upheld women.

Before
I formed you in the womb, I knew you;
before you came to Earth I consecrated you. —Jer. 1:5

Karma
and reincarnation arekey
concepts on the path of personal Christhood, as they explain our
opportunity to perfect the soul lifetime after lifetime. It is
true that our current personality only lives once. Then our souls
return, clothed with a new body and personality to experience
the next level of earth's classroom, balance karma and fulfill
divine purpose. When the alchemical marriage takes place between
the soul and Christ, we are ready for permanent reunion with God
are are freed from the cycle of rebirth.

Perhaps the reason there are not many direct references to reincarnation
in the Bible is because the knowledge of reincarnation was self-evident
to the people Jesus addressed, including the Essenes, the Pharisees
and the Greeks.Still, the concept of karma is very well illustrated
in Biblical scriptures like "whatsoever a man soweth, so
shall he reap;" "do unto others as you would have them
do unto you," "balancing every jot and tittle"
and "with the judgment you make you will be judged and the
measure you give will be the measure you get."

Four passages in the New Testament directly point
to reincarnation. In the first, Jesus asks his disciples, "
Whom do men say that I the son of man am?" Their answer illustrates
that the understanding of reincarnation was self evident among
Jesus' followers. "And they said, some say that thou art
John the Baptist, some Elias and others Jeremias, or one of the
prophets." (Matt. 116:13-14) The next two passages relate
to John the Baptist as Elijah come again. When John is imprisoned,
Jesus delivers a public tribute to him saying, "he, if you
will believe me, is the Elijah who was to return."(Matt.
11:14) Later, when John is martyred, Jesus explains, "I tell
you that Elijah has come and they have treated him as they please
(Mark 9:12). The Gospel of Matthew (17:13) adds to this statement,
"The disciples understood then that he had been speaking
of John the Baptist."

The third passage related in John 9 refers
to the man born blind whom Jesus healed and whom the disciples
questioned, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents that
he was born blind?" This question presupposes reincarnation,
for how could a man sin before birth had his soul not lived before?

[The
main Biblical scripture used to deny reincarnation is Hebrews
9:27, "men only die once, and after that comes judgment."
It is probably correct to assume here that the author is refering
to the body, not the soul especially in light of other events,
including Jesus' raising of Lazarus and Jairus' daughter from
the dead.]

I
disclose my mysteries to those who are worthy of my mysteries.—Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas

Following Jesus' ministry, reincarnation
and the path of personal Christhood was taught for several hundred
years by Christian gnostics, until their ministry was shut down
by church hierarchy for human power and political gain.

In the second century AD, Origen taught on
the preexistence of the soul and explained that earth was a place
for man to experience free will. His defense of personal spiritual
freedom threatened church fathers like Jerome, who held a far
more orthodox viewpoint and professed in the physical resurrection
of the dead down to the "flesh, blood, bones and genital
organs." Origen was eventually arrested, tortured, and imprisoned
by Jerome.

A
century later, Libyan priest Arius' defense of man's Christ potential
led to the fourth century Nicean council and Nicean creed, where
church fathers voted to set Jesus apart from other men as the
"only begotten son of God." Remaining gnostics were
martyred or fled, Origen's work was declared anathema and destroyed,
and secret gospels and apocryphal texts were buried. Church father
St. Augustine spun the doctrine of original sin to shame the soul,
to rob man's awareness of innate Christ potential and to substitute
a personal punishing God for impersonal divine laws of karma and
reincarnation.

Through the centuries, these political moves
were forgotten and self-serving human dogma became spiritual foundation.
Millions of mystics who sought the earlier mysteries, like
the Cathars in France, were persecuted as heretics and their legacy
destroyed. (Their history is recorded in Reincarnation: The
Missing Link in Christianity by Elizabeth Clare Prophet.)
And sadly to this day, in many Catholic and Protestant churches,
an orthodox interpretation of Jesus as "only son" and
of an arbitrary and despotic God made in man's image yet prevails.

I will tell you the decree
of the Lord. He said to me,
"You are my son; today I have begotten you."—Psalm 2

Those who pursue the path of personal Christhood understand
that the only begotten son of God refers to the Christ consciousness,
not to Jesus as a flesh and blood idol. Scriptures about other
"sons of God" and about becoming a son of God can be
found in both the old and new testaments regarding King David,
Melchisedec and others, as well as in Jewish texts like the Book
of Levi. In Galatians 4:5, Saint Paul teaches that Jesus came
as the "firstborn" to "enable us to be adopted
as sons." Hebrews 7:28 states "the word of the oath,
which was since the law, maketh the Son, who is consecrated forevermore."
And Revelation 21:7 declares, "He that overcometh shall inherit
all things; and I will be his God, and he shall be my son."

In the New Testament, Jesus commends us to
address God as "our Father" and tells us that those
who do the will of God are his brothers and sisters. When Jesus
said, "I AM the way, the truth and the life: no man cometh
to the Father but by me (John 14:6), he was speaking of the Christ
consciousness also referred to by Paul when he said, "Let
the mind be in you that was also in Christ Jesus" (Phil.
2:5) and "we have the mind of Christ (1Cor. 2:16).

The Christ consciousness is the way, the truth and
the life that saves us from our human ignorance and separation
from God. Souls become immortal when they fulfill this consciousness
and reunite with the presence of the I AM THAT I AM revealed to
Moses in the burning bush. This is what Jesus was referring to
when he said, "whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall
never die (John 11:26) and when he told the parable of the vine
and the branches.

Verily,
verily I say to you, he that believeth in me, the works that
I do shall he do also;
and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto
my Father. —John 14:12

Today,
with the rediscovery of these ancient teachings and the freedom
of religion secured for us by our founding fathers, we have an
unparalelled opportunity to right all wrongs, to follow in the
footsteps of our elder brother, master, savior and teacher, to
become Christ in our own right and to ascend back to God.

About
the painting Issa and the Skull of the Giant by Nicholas Roerich:
According to the Teachings of the Ascended Masters released
through Mark and Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the soul of Jesus had
many incarnations prior to his final embodiment. These include
incarnations on Atlantis as well as the lives of Abel, Joshua,
Joseph, King David and Elisha, chronicled in the Old Testament.
Perhaps Jesus' embodiment as David defeating the giant is what
Nicholas Roerich was attuned to in creating this mystical painting
of Issa and the Skull of the Giant.